Titus chapter 1, and I want to read verses 1 through 5. bondservant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ, according to the faith of God's elect and the acknowledgement of the truth which accords with godliness, in hope of eternal life, which God, who cannot lie, promised before time began, but has in due time manifested his word through preaching, which was committed to me according to the commandment of God our Savior. To Titus, a true son in our common faith, grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ our Savior. For this reason, I left you in Crete that you should set in order the things that are lacking and appoint elders in every city as I commanded you. Amen. Father, I pray that You would anoint my lips and enable me to faithfully bring Your Word, and for each one of us to appreciate it, to love it, and to live it. We pray in Christ's name. Amen. You may be seated. Last week, we looked at the mandate for a decentralized ministry. And today, I want to be looking at the nature of that ministry. And I think that Titus 1 is a wonderful summary. If you want a framework for this book, you could just think of it in terms of the chapter divisions. Godliness in the church, chapter one, give or take some verses. And godliness in the home, chapter two. Godliness in society, chapter three. And Pastor Titus was responsible to be preaching to all three of those areas. But he begins this book with some foundational principles And because they're foundational, I've labeled them as the ABCs of ministry. It's an expression for the rudiments of ministry. And I had a hard time coming up with an A that was easy to understand, but A stands for abnegation. It's a word that our family learned from a book called 1200 Essential Words Every Educated Person Should Be Able to Use and Define, okay? With a title like that, I got to use the word. And who's going to admit they don't know what the word means? You know, you're not going to be educated. Well, if you don't know, we'll educate you. The dictionary defines abnication as renunciation of something, self-denial, putting one's own interests on the back burner to someone else's interests. And the idea is that ministers are supposed to be looking to the Lord's interests and not to their own. Paul not only calls upon teaching elder Titus, but also upon the ruling elders and also himself to live this life of abnegation. And if even an apostle has to be called to the mandate of servanthood, we know that we all are. Verse 1 says, Paul, a bondservant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ. Now, we're quite used to, in the 20th century, talking about servanthood. being slaves of God and things like that. And so it's a little bit hard for us to imagine how tough it would have been for Greeks to be hearing these words coming from the lips of the Apostle Paul. It was not a complementary term at all. The word for bondservant is doulos, and that word almost everywhere is translated as slave, but I think King James has it that way. Our modern versions, I don't know for what reason, but they kind of soften the term. Does anybody know what a bondservant is? Well, it's similar to a slave, but it's a little bit of a softer term, and I think it's unfortunate. Let me give you some dictionary definitions of that term. speak, NAS, LEH, Liddell, Scott, they all define it as slave. There's a couple that give a little bit of an expanded definition. Lau and Nida say, pertaining to a state of being completely controlled by someone or something. That's slavery, isn't it? Completely controlled. Dictionary goes on, subservient to, controlled by, one who was a slave in the sense of becoming the property of an owner. And that's what Paul says that he was. Strong's dictionary says, a slave, literal or figurative, involuntary or voluntary, frequently, therefore, in a qualified sense of subjection or subserviency. New International Dictionary, New Testament theology, says, "...because Julio involved the abrogation of one's own autonomy and the subordination of one's will to that of another, the Greek felt only revulsion and contempt for the position of a site." Now, keep in mind, these are the first words out of Paul's mouth to the Greek convert Titus and to the Greek congregation that he is ministering to. a bondservant, Paul, a slave of God. They're shocking words, but they immediately set the spiritual context for what he's going to be talking about in this epistle. And the context is self-abnegation, putting one's will completely into subordination to God's will. And really, I think this is the first and the most important qualification for leadership. Anyway, the dictionary went on to say, It remained peculiar to Greek thought that man found his true worth only in being conscious of himself and in the free development of his potential. Sounds just like the modern self-esteem movement. There's nothing new under the sun. He goes on, "'Hence, dule you ain, in the sense of dependence and subordination and service, is debasing and contemptible.' That is, to the Greeks it was." So this shows how completely contrary the Christian way of thinking was to the Greek way of thinking. For the Greeks, a leader was somebody who had pride, who had self-assertion. Whereas for the Christian, it was a person who laid down his life in servanthood. He was the greatest servant. Self-abnegation. And Paul gloried in that self-abnegation. It wasn't something like, oh, OK, I guess it's part of the job. No, he glories in it. He puts it first. And this is the question I want to ask you this morning. Is your will in total submission to God's will? Or do you buck against some of the things that God tells you in his word? If not, you lack even the most rudimentary qualification for ministry, whether it's official recognized ministry or it's ministry for someone else. If you don't have this self-abnegation, you're unqualified to be a minister. Ministry requires fast people, faithful, available, submissive, and teachable. In other words, they've got to be good bondservants. They've got to be good slaves of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so that's the first word that teaches abnegation. There's another word there, and it's the word apostle. In secular And also in biblical Greek, the word apostle could be apostolos. It's just a transliteration of the New Testament. But it's frequently translated as an ambassador or an envoy. Some people treat it as a charge d'affaires. Many times it translates the Hebrew word sheliak. And a sheliak was somebody who represented legally another person. And so when that person spoke, This other individual was in reality, legally speaking, he acted on behalf of this other person. So in one sense, you could say, man, you could not get two further away terms. You've got the lowly slave way down here, and you've got the apostle with incredibly high authority up here. He speaks in the name of Christ. He speaks the very words of Christ. But if you think about it, they really do amount to the same thing because Paul had no authority except for the authority of Christ. He was not to speak his own words. He was to speak the words that Christ had given him to speak. And so it had to be a total self-abnegation there as well. His whole interests were wrapped up in serving the Lord. He was sent by the Lord. He represented the Lord. And to have an apostle who did not have self-abnegation was a total contradiction in terms. His whole life was a representation of someone else's life. And so what does biblical ministry look like? Looks like, first of all, abnegation. And if it was true of the apostle Paul, how much more so should it be true of every one of us? We're not here to build our own kingdom. This is not the Lord's church. It's not about us. It's about the Lord. Paul, a bondservant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ. Now, the B of ministry deals with its aim, its goals, its objectives. What is it that our ministry shoots at? And the closest bee I could come up with was a bullseye. We shoot at the bullseye, right? And the next phrase gives those objectives that we are aiming at, and you could just think of them as being three concentric circles on this bullseye. He says there, according to the faith, and the word according to is a preposition. It can have the meaning of for the purpose of," or William Hendrickson says, here it probably has the meaning of, in the interests of. And so what is it that his ministry is promoting or is in the interests of, or if you like the New American Standard translation, what is it for? Well, he says, it is for the faith of God's elect and the acknowledgement of the truth which accords with godliness. Somehow earlier on in the singing got a real catch. The whole of ministry can be summed up in three things. Promoting faith in God's people, instructing God's people, and changing God's people. Seeking out the elect, teaching the elect, and changing the elect. And we're going to look at each of those three. He says, according to or for the faith of God's elect. True ministry promotes a faith in God. See, Paul is not interested in helping people to be self-sufficient in the church. Paul is interested in making sure we don't have any self-sufficiency to make sure that our attitude is such, without Christ, I can do nothing. See, you have succeeded in ministry if you have instilled in the lives of people a realization they can't do it. They look at the task that God has set before them. They realize they cannot do it, but they go to the Lord who can do it through them. OK? So you have succeeded if you tremble at the thought of doing any ministry in your own strength, but you go to the Lord and you receive strength from Him. Everything flows from God through Jesus and into our lives. Faith is claiming something outside of ourselves. And really, if you think about it, even the existence of faith comes from God, totally dependent on Him. Only the elect have faith. It's the faith of the elect, the faith of God's elect. And Hebrews 11 says, without faith, it is impossible to please God. And so that's a pretty important objective for a ministry to be engaging in. And if this is one of the key objectives, this is something you can measure a church by. Is this church engaging in ministry as it ought? You need to ask, what kind of faith is it stirring up in the people of God? If the vision of the leadership is so small that anybody could accomplish the tasks in their own strength, then it's really a sub-biblical standard. We must not be dumbing down and we must not be truncating the vision that the Word of God gives for what the church needs to accomplish. We're called to faith, and if you're the elect of God, God has given you faith. So we're called to reach the elect and to stir up their faith. Second, we are called to train God's elect and the whole council of God. The next phrase is the acknowledgement of the truth. Or if you have a new American standard Bible, it's a knowledge of the truth. Either translation is just fine. And knowledge has been given a bad rap and, and many Christian circles. And it's because, I think, 1 Corinthians 3, 13 is taken out of context that knowledge puffs up. Well, knowledge all by itself can very easily puff up, but we don't want it by itself. Paul speaks very highly of knowledge, and here he says you can judge a ministry by the amount of knowledge that that ministry has brought into the lives of people. You can judge the entire ministry. I don't see as one of Paul's objectives here that the ministry has been successful if people come away from a worship service feeling good. No, that's a man-centered perspective. Ministry that does not cram people's heads full of knowledge is a defective ministry. Paul wanted his ministry judged by the degree to which people knew and acknowledged the truth. So here's the question, do you hunger for the truth? And as we look to elders and as we look to other officers in the future, our prayer needs to be that the Lord would expand the ministry of the Word and the knowledge of His people, not just the knowledge that's here, but the knowledge that is extended outside of this congregation as well. It's an important part of ministry. The third ring on the objective that we're shooting at is godliness. And to sum up all three of these objectives, we could say that a faith that does not lead to hungering for the Word of God is a defective faith. And a knowledge that does not lead to godliness is a defective knowledge. All three of these are wrapped up in each other. Faith leads to godliness. Godliness, the standard of godliness God gives requires faith. You cannot have one without the other. They're a bundle wrapped up in each other. And as you consider again, officers for the future, be praying that this church would hit the bullseye. I pray that we would be ever more effective in finding the elect, training the elect, and changing the elect, that we would be so effective in our focus that families would be transformed, chapter 2, that society would be transformed, chapter 3. Now, the C of ministry, the third foundation is the comfort that the church should have. That's very easy if you've got a big vision in a church to begin to be intimidated and to feel there's no way that we can accomplish this. And so we've got to look at the comfort that starts in verse 2, in hope of eternal life, which God who cannot lie promised before time began. Now, once again, it's all about God. It's not about us. Our comfort should not rest in how many officers we get. Our comfort should not rest in how much money we get. Our sufficiency needs to rest in the Lord God and what He provides in our lives. And so in this verse, we have hope for the future, confidence in the present, and we've got a trust in God's eternal decrees in the past, in hope of eternal life. One of the neat things about the ministry is that it gives hope to people who had lost all hope, who were hopeless. And because they don't need to worry about the future anymore, they've got a hope for the future, they're freed up to serve in the present. Now, one of the attacks that frequently comes against Calvinism is when you believe in eternal security, it's going to make people so that they're lazy, they don't do anything. Well, history proves the exact opposite to be the case. That's one of the reasons that secular people even speak. the Protestant work ethic as the Calvinistic work ethic. It's because we are freed up not having to work for our salvation. We're secure for all of eternity. We are freed up to work out of a love for God, out of the thrill of taking dominion. Okay? Eternal security does not make people lazy. It does not make people carnal. On the contrary, it stirs up a holiness in their lives. And so there is a comfort, a security for the future. The next phrase speaks of God who cannot lie or God who does not lie. Truth is what God says it is, and so by definition He couldn't lie. But unless you embrace the inerrancy of Scripture, in other words, unless you believe that the Word of God does not lie, you're going to be tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine. You're not going to have stability in life. You will not have confidence. And you can judge a ministry, and whether it is a biblical ministry, by whether they are convinced and absolutely driven by the inerrancy of the Word of God. See, the Bible gives the axioms for all of life. and to the degree to which we believe God doesn't lie. We're taking those axioms seriously. We're applying them to life. And then finally, thirdly, a trust in God's eternal decrees. God who cannot lie promised before time began. That's Calvinism in a nutshell right there. By the way, who was it that God promised that to? If he promised it before time began, There weren't any men around. There weren't any angels around. Who did he promise it to? Well, I think this is another one of the oodles and oodles of scriptures indicating the Trinity. And it's also another one of those scriptures that proves the eternal covenant. Before time began, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit covenanted with each other to create this world. The Father had a plan that encompassed everything from the beginning of creation through to the end of time. And the Son said that He would communicate this plan, and He would live this plan out. The Spirit, who would empower this plan, and the people's lives, who would apply it. And so from all eternity past, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit communicated with each other. They loved each other. They always existed. And so that's just a side point there. But what a comfort this eternal and unchangeable plan brings in the midst of upheavals, discouragements, frustrations that come into your lives. Calvinism has been one of the most stabilizing doctrines in my life. It's an incredible thing. It enables you to keep on keeping on when everything seems like it's out of control and when it seems like you're faithfully ministering, but you don't see any results, you realize, no, God cannot deny himself. God will carry everything through according to his eternal decrease. And so it is a comfort that we can rest on. The fourth foundation is dogmatism or certainty. And this too is a great judge of how biblical a ministry is. If there is zero dogmatism in a ministry, that's a defective ministry. That's very, very popular nowadays to just be tolerant of any doctrine, anything that is being taught out there. Our pluralistic culture is just as offended by this point of dogmatism as it was by the previous three points. And really, it takes the grace of God to appreciate true biblical ministry. I think it takes the grace of God. So let's look at some of this dogmatism. First, a dogmatism in the truth of God's Word. He says in verse 2, "...in hope of eternal life, which God, who cannot lie, promised before time began, but has in due time manifested His Word through preaching." Now, what was it that was being preached? It was the Word that was being preached. And the Word cannot lie. Why? Because God cannot lie. It's simple logic that follows through. And I have zero tolerance for Christians who deny the inerrancy of Scripture. I have zero tolerance for people who say, well, Paul was wrong, you know, on when he said that women could not be pastors. I have zero tolerance for evolutionists who, Christians who pit evolution against the first chapters of the book of Genesis. They weren't there. God was there. How do they know, you know? What they are doing is they are pitting their puny finite minds against God's mind. Instead of allowing the word of God to judge and to transform their minds, which is what Romans 12 calls us to do, they are allowing their minds to judge and transform the scripture and change it into something it never intended to say. I mean, even a child knows there aren't billions of years in Genesis chapter one. There's seven days. It's laid out very, very clearly. And to say that the Bible has error is to call God a liar, and that's why I cannot tolerate it. It's just rank heresy. And yet evangelicalism, believe it or not, is rife with the doctrine of partial inerrancy. Now, evangelicalism used to be a good word, but it's been hijacked by the partial inerrancy crowd. And what is partial inerrancy? Well, it's partial errancy, isn't it? They like to say, oh, yeah, it's partially inerrant. Yeah, I believe in inerrancy. But they also believe in that the Bible makes mistakes. And how do you tell which part of the Bible makes mistakes and which part does not? Paul says you can't go down that road. You either take it all or you leave it all. And if God has given his elect faith, what is it faith in? It's faith in the word of God. And when people say, I think the Bible has errors in it, what they are saying is, I don't have a faith in the Word of God. Let me tell you something, the only basis for faith is the Word of God. And unless you allow that Word to judge your mind, rather than your mind judging the Word, you're not going to have a basis for anything in life. Now, don't get me wrong, we should not be dogmatic about our own opinions. There's a lot of things we're dogmatic about that we shouldn't be dogmatic about, but flee from a church that hates all dogmatism because what has happened is it has substituted another subtle form of dogmatism of its own. It's a dogmatism that you should not be dogmatic. It's a dogmatism that you must not offend other people. Well, Paul says that if our goal is to please other people and not to offend them, you can look it up sometime. Galatians 1 verse 10, I think it is. He says, if I still sought to please man, I would not be a bondservant of Christ. Those are strong words. So you can see how all of these points really are tied up in each other. So we must be dogmatic first that the Word of God is inerrant. The second thing we should be dogmatic about is the need to preach God's Word. He says, but is in due time manifested his word through preaching. which was committed to me according to the commandment of God our Savior." Not according to the suggestion of God our Savior. Preaching is a commandment. It's not an option. Some people may prefer in churches, you know, to have video clips and to have drama and to have other things that are a little bit more entertaining than preaching. But Paul says, no, it's not an option. This is the commandment of God. He has chosen to cause His kingdom to be extended through the foolishness of preaching. And that's what preaching is in the eyes of many people. It doesn't draw the crowds. It's not as entertaining as some of the other forms of media are. You can judge a ministry based on whether it has this dogmatism. Now, you may prefer to go home and read a book during the worship service, and God says, no, no, no, that's not an option. This is something I'm going to be dogmatic about, Paul says. He wants preaching. It's got to be central. Now, the third thing that Paul is dogmatic about is that there is an objective biblical content to this preaching, to our faith. Verse 4 speaks of our common faith to Titus, a true son in our common faith. Paul was not somebody to let truths of Scripture grow, go, just because there were people, heretics out there, who were opposed to it. You know, he didn't take the attitude, oh, you know, I don't know. There's so many different interpretations and opinions on this. I don't think we should be dogmatic. No, he didn't take that view. He said, read the Scripture. What does it say? Sure, there's people who like to twist it around and use all kinds of mental gymnastics that are very complicated to read as to why it doesn't mean what it seems like it says that it means. But Paul says, no, there is a content and it's our common faith that we need to be following. statements I keep hearing here in Omaha all the time is, let's forget about doctrine. Doctrine divides. Love unites. And I said, well, what defines love? You know, it's the Bible alone that can define love. Some people think it's the loving thing, you know, to fornicate. Others think it's the loving thing to allow a woman to have an abortion. If the Bible doesn't define love, it's a meaningless term. And I just challenge you sometime, look up the word doctrine in the concordance. It occurs over and over again. In fact, even in this book it occurs. Titus 1, verse 9, sound doctrine. Titus 2, verse 1, verse 7, verse 10. Doctrine was very, very important to the Apostle Paul. And so the content of our ministry must be the Word, the whole Word, and nothing but the Word. We do not preach the psychology of Rogers or Freud. The Bible has its own psychology. We do not preach the economics of Marx or of Adam Smith. The Bible has its own economics, right? One of the things that characterized Christ's preaching over against the preaching of the Pharisees was that he taught as one who had authority, not as the rabbis. Now, what was the rabbi's teaching like? Well, just read the Talmud and you will find out. It's just all kinds of loose opinions that they love to appeal to the experts instead of dealing with the text of scripture. And so you'll read along, you'll say, okay, rabbi so-and-so said this, but rabbi XYZ said this, and maybe we could do this third thing. They just didn't have anything. It was all hazy. Read the Talmud. I'm not making it up. It's an incredible exercise in dialectic, where they get this opinion, then that opinion, and they come up with numerous midway opinions. Christ taught with authority. He taught with dogmatism. And our dogmatism may not go beyond the Scripture. We must restrict ourselves to that. As I said, there are some things we shouldn't be dogmatic about, but we can at least be dogmatic about this. The Bible is inerrant. Why? Because God cannot lie. And this is the Word of God. Secondly, that there must be preaching. And thirdly, that there is a content to that preaching. And that content has got to be the whole counsel of the Word of God. So we've looked at the A, the B, the C, and the D of ministry. The E are the emissaries. An emissary is not a bird. An emissary is a person who is sent with a mission. Here's the amazing thing. God has chosen to establish his church through the weakness of human officers and human members of churches. That's an incredible thing to the weakness of man. He didn't send angels. He chose to work through the weakness of man. The Apostle Paul considered himself to be nothing, and yet he testified that the power of God's Holy Spirit worked in him mightily. Timothy was a person who was very timid. very nervous. In fact, some people believe that he had to take wine for his stomach's sake because he had nervous problems, maybe not ulcers, but some kind of a stomach problem along those lines. And yet God powerfully worked through Timothy. If you look at chapter two, last verse of Titus, it says, let no one despise you. It appears that there were people in the church at Crete that despised the ministry of Titus. We don't know why. And yet God powerfully used Titus to establish a strong, vibrant church there and other churches elsewhere. God works through our human weakness. Now, we may think we don't have need of any further officers, but Paul begs to differ. If you look at verse five, He says, for this reason, I left you in Crete that you should set in order the things that are lacking. There were some things that were lacking, and one of those things were ruling elders. Now, did the church of Crete survive without those ruling elders? Yes, it did. It actually survived for several years. If William Hendrickson is right, that the church in Crete was established shortly after Paul's first missionary journey. that would have been around 49 or 50 A.D., then that meant that this church had been existing for 13 years with only teaching elders. If the church was established during his third missionary journey, which is the very latest it could possibly have been established They had been surviving for five or seven years, but they were still lacking. That's the point Yes, they can survive but we're not talking about surviving. We're talking about Going ahead and being strong now. This does say something about not being in a hurry, doesn't it? Paul didn't jump instantly into having officers. Better to have no officers than to have unqualified officers. Apparently, the people were not ready to be elected, and what Titus was doing is he was trying to change that situation. He was trying to prepare them to receive those elders. In any case, God works through the weakness of human officers. In verse 5 and following, we see that Titus is commissioned And every elder in the church is commissioned. Pastoral ministry is commissioned. That means it's something that comes under accountability. Verse 7 speaks of elders as being stewards of God. That means they're responsible to God. Verse 9 says, "...holding fast the faithful word, as he has been taught, that he may be able, by sound doctrine, both to exhort and convict those who contradict." And then the rest of the book illustrates that principle. And so they're commissioned by God. They have the same authority that Paul had. What authority did he have? The Word. The only authority we have is the word of God. Had the same comfort, had the same dogmatism. And so the ABCs of Paul's ministry need to be the ABCs of the ministry as a whole. The last foundation of ministry is the fountain or the source from which ministry flows. Verse four continues, grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, our Savior. If Titus needed grace to be able to minister, we know we're going to need God's grace to be able to administer effectively. If Titus needed God's mercy, then don't you expect officers to be perfect? You know, they need God's mercy and they need your mercy. You know, it's a tough thing to be an officer. If they if Titus needed the peace of God to guard his heart and mind in Christ Jesus You know, we're going to need the peace of God here are some things you can be praying for that we would look to the Lord to strengthen us in our ministry because Ministry is not something that is is easily easily done. You're in the limelight everybody Criticizes you they notice everything that's about you. There's nothing that's secret Your salary sure isn't secret or anything that's secret about you. You know, you're open to the limelight. And so where do we go? We go to the Lord for grace, for mercy. When we fall, we go to the Lord for his peace that guards our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. And so pray for these future officers, associate pastors, elders, deacons, pray that they would go to the right resource, go to the fountainhead. And once again, these blessings come from God through the merits of Jesus Christ. If we try to do our ministry in our own strength, our striving will be losing. But hey, as Martin Luther said, if the right man is on our side, the man of God's own choosing, if Jesus Christ himself is on our side, then not even the gates of hell can prevail against the ministry of this church. Amen? And that needs to be our prayer that we would we would have these ABCs in rich measure. Pray for them here and may the Lord receive all the glory. Amen. Father God, we thank you for your word that it is indeed sufficient for our faith and practice. And I pray as we look into this book of Titus that our hearts would be encouraged. that we would have a stability, that we would have a clearness of thinking, that there would be a grid within which we could operate for the future. Bless the elder candidates as they seek to prepare, guide their minds and hearts in Christ Jesus as they consider whether they are called by you to this job. Guide the people as they as they vote in the future as well. And Father, we'll be sure to give you all the praise and all of the glory. We long to see Your churches full, Lord. We long to see Your churches established solidly in the ministry of Jesus Christ. And we pray that we, as a weak, small congregation, may be able to make a difference that is all out of proportion to our numbers, simply because of the presence of Your Holy Spirit within us. Give us faith, Father, a big faith to trust You. You are a great God. and You have given to us great and awesome responsibilities in Your Word. May we take those responsibilities seriously and live them to Your glory. In Jesus' name, amen.